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The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

inc.com

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Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#31

Post by paulrademacher »

d2vid wrote: post #20
roc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One avenue would be a non-profit organization that takes membership fees from software firms and uses the pooled money to fight these legal battles, or make collective licensing agreements. The shakedown side of the troll business model relies on their being able to absorb more in legal fees than their targets. If their targets could actually force them to follow-through on their legal threats, the profitability of t…

How about an IP lawfirm offering insurance against patent trolls? Your company pays an annual fee. Once you get a shakedown notice, the law firm responds, letting the patent troll know that you have $0 marginal cost to making a stand. If the law firm had enough clients, their incentive would be to go to court to invalidate bad patents so they don't have to keep responding to the same shakedown notices.

Ugh, that's still protection money. It just went to a different lawyer.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#32

Post by dllthomas »

rayiner wrote: post #30
blindhippo wrote: post #23

One of the interesting themes in the article is "we can't afford to go to court". Not to detract from the main issue of patent reform but perhaps America should look into making it's legal system a bit more user friendly. It should be completely viable for a smaller entity to take on one of these "bogus" claims in court and not go bankrupt doing it. Smacking these claims down in court might go a long way towards prev…

Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. Maybe this is an easy way to disrupt patent trolling: a "how to" guide for taking an obviously stupid claim out in summary judgment.

Would be awesome, but smells risky.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#33

Post by tomrod »

lancefisher wrote: post #19
finnw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this literally makes my blood boil Unlikely unless you're the Human Torch.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+literally "2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling."

Bah. I refuse to allow language to advance beyond that which I learned in the sixth grade!

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#34

Post by thaumaturgy »

rayiner wrote: post #30
blindhippo wrote: post #23

One of the interesting themes in the article is "we can't afford to go to court". Not to detract from the main issue of patent reform but perhaps America should look into making it's legal system a bit more user friendly. It should be completely viable for a smaller entity to take on one of these "bogus" claims in court and not go bankrupt doing it. Smacking these claims down in court might go a long way towards prev…

Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. Maybe this is an easy way to disrupt patent trolling: a "how to" guide for taking an obviously stupid claim out in summary judgment.

> Nothing prevents you from representing yourself.

...other than good sense.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#35

Post by rayiner »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #13
nlh wrote: post #3

Reading stories like this literally makes my blood boil. I know it's been discussed at length, but still. This is pure economic leakage -- it's an unintended consequence of well-intentioned legislation and it's absolute BS that companies have to put up with the trolls. Good on the guys for putting up a fight, as expensive as it is. I feel particularly frustrated about this whole mess because I don't see an end in sig…

> unintended consequence of well-intentioned legislation I'd question both of your adjectives there. This seems like an intended consequence of heavily lobbied legislation, as evidenced by the reactions to any attempts to change this system.

The current structure of patent law isn't the result of heavy lobbying, or at least as we understand it in the modern form. See: http://www.ladas.com/Patents/USPatentHistory.html

The basic structure of the current law dates to 1952, and indeed even that update wasn't a big change from the 1836 Act. Maybe the 1995 amendment regarding biotechnology inventions is a lobbying-influenced giveaway, but most of the changes have narrowed the patent law, not expanded it.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#36

Post by mistercow »

lancefisher wrote: post #19
finnw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this literally makes my blood boil Unlikely unless you're the Human Torch.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+literally "2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling."

I think we should stand our ground on this one. We've let every word that can convey the correct definition of "literally" slide down the hyperbole treadmill. I realize that languages live and evolve, but the loss of all unambiguous indicators of actual literalness has made our language objectively worse.

You might argue that we can always tell the intent from context, but the whole point of "literally" is for when the context suggests that the expression in question may be figurative. If I say "I literally ate all of the soup in my house last night", you don't know if I'm actually out of soup now, or if I just ate a bunch of soup.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#37

Post by gav »

blindhippo wrote: post #23

One of the interesting themes in the article is "we can't afford to go to court". Not to detract from the main issue of patent reform but perhaps America should look into making it's legal system a bit more user friendly. It should be completely viable for a smaller entity to take on one of these "bogus" claims in court and not go bankrupt doing it. Smacking these claims down in court might go a long way towards prev…

It's not just the cost of going to court you have to think about, it's the cost of having your lawyers investigate a claim too.

There was a company going around asking $25k from e-tailors for a seemingly bogus search patent. The lawyers we worked with recommended that the client just settle as they'd blow through that way before it ever got to trial.

The legality of using pre-settlement letters to extort money from smaller companies needs to be looked at.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#38

Post by noonespecial »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. Maybe this is an easy way to disrupt patent trolling: a "how to" guide for taking an obviously stupid claim out in summary judgment.

> Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. ...other than good sense.

That's the part that needs fixing. A greedy amoral entity can threaten your entire livelihood for no cost to them and you are powerless to defend yourself or even understand the process by which to do so.

That sounds like institutionalized injustice to me.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#39

Post by krichman »

mistercow wrote: post #36
lancefisher wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+literally "2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling."

I think we should stand our ground on this one. We've let every word that can convey the correct definition of "literally" slide down the hyperbole treadmill. I realize that languages live and evolve, but the loss of all unambiguous indicators of actual literalness has made our language objectively worse. You might argue that we can always tell the intent from context, but the whole point of "literally" is for when t…

I like it because "literally" is being used hyperbolically, therefore in those cases it is describing the opposite of itself.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#40

Post by noonespecial »

ISL wrote: post #2

Does anyone have a reference for how much trolls tend to pay inventors for their patents? Trolls get a bad rap, and I'm opposed to trolling as opposed to licensing to manufacturers, but they're one possible form of middleman between inventors and infringers. One major point of a patent is to compensate the inventor for doing something smart. If the trolls are "non-practicing", then they must have acquired their paten…

The patents trolls use are mostly the detritus of failed businesses acquired for nothing during liquidation, not garage inventors making good.

Part of the problem was that every web business in the 90's figured that storing their data online and delivering it by browser was a brand new idea so they all got the same patents over and over. Every troll on the block has a "data on a server" patent.

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